Franny Series, Part Seven
ye rin mok; date unknown
Dear Franny,
I haven’t been able to stop listening to this piece for hours.
A fever tore through me for two days and when it finally broke last night I think something was knocked loose.
Since we talked tonight, I mean after, I’ve been sitting here quietly, pulling sticky, garnet-colored pomegranate jewels from their sticky, white-colored membrane; I’ve been trying to sort through some things.
You know, trying to set the right angles correctly against each other.
I’m being asked, over and over again, what I want; I’m realizing it’s not so clear.
What’s coming into focus, though, is that there is something fundamentally cracked, bruised, inside me.
The last few days I’ve felt it,
(doing these things,
it’s a low grade pain around my heart, deep in my chest,
asking for them)
like there’s been trauma and my body is trying to protect its most vital organ.
I don’t know how far I’ll be able to push myself, and I am not confident that once It is in front of me I’ll see clearly enough to recognize that I don’t need to push anymore.
I don’t know if I’ve tricked myself into believing that there is a voice that will soothe me, hands into which I can lay my head, a scent that will be like Home.
So I concentrate on things that bring me small pleasure; things I can catalogue, document, Collect:
+ The calming ritual of making tea: the gas lighting on my stove like a sharp intake of breath, the agave nectar folding gently on top of the tea bag in the bottom of my koi mug, the feathering of the liquor into the cream-filled, steaming water like clouds through the forever dark Seattle winter sky.
+ Taking sea-salt baths: slipping into water so hot my skin glows red under the surface, salt water pouring out of my body, running down into my eyes, believing that whatever’s bad inside me is coming out with it, going down the drain when I’m finished,
kneeling next to the cool porcelain and scrubbing it clean as if nothing ever happened.
+ The heart breaking beauty of the entropy of lilies.
+ The unbelievable comfort of paper: its scent in old books, how is surrenders itself to ink while I write and the way dust collects on its surface when I am drawing because I can’t help but sketch with a heavy hand, the promise it delivers in the form of letters, the way it can hold secrets for years so I don’t have to.
I don’t know if it’s true that there is somewhere, or someone, that will help me slow down enough to calm how it is inside here, that will keep me still but,
I don’t feel like a velveteen rabbit anymore, Franny, I don’t believe I am broken despite the cracks and bruises.
Cracked and bruised,
filled with sea salt water, secrets, and cream-soaked tea,
with fingers covered in ink and tiny paper cuts is just how I am.
xoj
Download: Fryderyk Chopin - Nocturne for Piano No. 2 in E Flat Major
Buy the Album: (I’m too tired tonight to look for this for you, I’m sorry. I’m sure that any $4 classical music sampler will do the trick.)
